Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Laying Ghosts is a many-layered story. There's a mystery to be solved, as well as a lot of family drama and relationship changes and growth for Joe and Kabe. Joe is a wonderful first-person narrator. He comes across as a bit of a redneck and sometimes a bit too stuck on the rules, but inside he's much more. He's a sharp investigator, a loyal lover, son, and brother, and much more emotional than his tough exterior would reveal.

Monday, June 03, 2013

I’m going to start to blog about the attempts to maintain a self sustainable lifestyle in an urban setting which we regularly engage in to varying levels of success. I’ll sort them under the category “urban survivalist,” so if you don’t want to hear about this that’s the category you should unsubscribe.

Cheese. We love it, the fresher the better. My guy, SG, has been online looking at Mozzarella making…because he makes homemade pizza (deep and thin — daymn good). So he found a recipe, went to the not quite local beer/wine/cheese making shop in Van Nuys, and got citric acid and rennit tabs (’cause killing a calf and rendering down the stomach lining is not going to happen in the middle of Pasadena). 1gallon of whole milk…from the organic grocer so that it’s pasteurized, but not ultra-pasteurized, and hormone free. About $4, US.

Yeah, do the recipe and that gives us two fist size balls of what I would call a solid farmer’s cheese. I can buy 3x as much at Costo for less. And the result is more akin to a mild feta or firm ricotta than anything resembling mozzarella. Good taste, mind you, Princess loves it (and I love anything that will get her to consume dairy) and it’s decent crumbled over a light salad, but it’s not the texture of fresh mozzarella that I’m used to.

I like to know the process of a hot milk cheese. There are obviously magical, mojo, shaking rattle steps over the pot elements that the “oh so simple” recipes we’ve found leave out. Those, apparently, are critical to cheese making.

This I’ll chalk up to a not quite fail, since we got something edible out of it.